In Timbuktu

Greetings from Timbuktu! It feels rather grand to write it, though the town is quite underwhelming when you actually explore the place. Still the whole point of Timbuktu is in the getting here (and the getting out again alive). Even the early European explorers who finally fought their way across burning desert sands and through hostile tribes to reach this place were disappointed in what they found after all their efforts. Timbuktu is truly a city of the imagination, its fabled wealth that endowed it with mosques, madressahs and one of the greatest universities on Earth in the late Middle Ages, is all long gone with barely a trace to show it ever existed at all.

In 1325 the Emperor of Mali collapsed the global price of gold for over a decade by giving away such vast quantities of the stuff as he passed through Cairo on his return journey from a pilgrimmage to Mecca. When Ibn Battutah visited the city a few years later, traversing the Sahara from Morocco, the city was entering into its golden age. These days there is just one mud mosque surviving from the 14th century, the streets of a depleted town are encroached by sand, and the only precious metal to be seen is the debased silver used by the Tuareg, the dominant ethnic group here, to fashion crude, though lovely, jewellery items for sale to tourists.

Inevitably, getting to Timbuktu proved quite an adventure. We finally reached it after an epic three day boat trip up the Niger River from a place downstream from the bustling port of Mopti. Our boat ran out of fuel and then proceeded to bust its motor so we pretty much limped into our destination half a day late, jaded, and having run out of food. However, it was a beautiful and fascinating journey, with plenty of diversions along the way, so our spirits weren't entirely dashed. It's worth remembering that it was often the departing that the early explorers found most tricky about Timbuktu, carrying with it all the associated risks of getting yourself murdered on a lonely stretch of desert road. Although our truck made it here without us, it was at the expense of the radiator, our sole remaining radiator following the tribulations of Cameroon. So nobody's holding their breath on when we get to leave.

These days Mopti, which is situated on a most peculiar inland delta, is the economic hub of eastern Mali, a region effectively defined by the great northerly sweep of the river. Its harbour is the stuff of photographers' dreams, as is the equally lively Monday market in the neighbouring town of Djenne, with its fabulous maze of atmospheric medieval streets in mud brick, centring on the graceful Friday Mosque, the world's largest mud brick building. Together these towns seem to encapsulate everything Timbuktu ought to be but is not.